Cold Fusion in a Breadbox Instead of a Bottle

rawbytes writes "For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around scientists has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or UFO sightings. After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle and the subsequent retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But that's all about to change. A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing." From the article: "Scientists have gotten fusion to occur in the laboratory before, but for the most part, they've tried to mimic conditions inside the sun by whipping hydrogen gas up to extreme temperatures or slamming atoms together in particle accelerators. Both of those options require huge energies and gigantic equipment, not the sort of stuff easily available to build a generator. Is there any way of getting protons close enough together for fusion to occur that doesnt require the energy output of a large city to make it happen? The answer, it turns out, is yes."

Comments

CSM?

[Stranger4U]

I don't want to be on the offensive side to anyone, but the Christian Science Monitor doesn't seem like the best source for science news. I mean, with all the news of anti-evolution campaigns and intelligent design, couldn't we find a better source for the story?

Cold fusion works

[richmaine]

In addition to this being old news, as noted by others...

Let me just note that cold fusion works and always has. This has been known since the 1920's; it is called quantum tunneling. This isn't even a matter of debate. The only "small" issue is the many orders of magnitude difference between the yield obtainable in practice and what is needed for breakeven.

So just saying that cold fusion was achieved is no data at all. The question of whether the technique scales to the breakeven point is absolutely critical.

(Though as I recall, this particular application wasn't touted as being an approach to energy generation anyway).

Eh

[Reality Master 101]

UCLA -- they have a crappy football team. Let me know when a university with a decent football team has some results.

Re:University of Los Angeles?

[Proteus]

In-FUCKING-formative? The University of California at Los Angeles. UCLA. No damned typo. Ugh... moderators...